Those people I have been talking about so far are or were well-known. Harold Boyer is the great man from my early life, his name is little known beyond the public school where he taught. That is to say, West Buckland School in North Devon.
I was at school at West Buckland in the early years of World War Two. It must have been no easy task to find masters to teach at that period.
‘Crasher’ Fay was Irish. He taught English and was a good man. One of Walter Scott’s novels was scheduled as a set book. We found that the first five chapters were simply about a man walking down a tedious lane. We complained that this was terribly boring. Fay agreed, and set us The Trumpet Major instead. It proved to be the start of my acquaintance with Thomas Hardy’s novels and poems, long and valuable as that acquaintance has been.
A less successful choice for a master was Mr Coopland. He was a conscientious objector – and instantly became known as Chicken Coopland. Well, you know what boys are like.
No matter how much he caned us, he could not make us love him.
Harold Boyer was of German ancestry. He was fine – a born teacher, and more than that. He came with a beautiful dark-haired wife and they lived in a small house by the stream flowing through a rural feature known as Charles Bottom, which we boys knew as Charley’s Arse.
Harold taught us History and English. He walked about the classroom, gestured, exaggerated, joked. He seemed to like us. He never caned us. We were like buttercups in his hands.
Boyer evidently came across one of the naughty stories I concocted and circulated, because he then interested himself in my writing. That was new!
And the time came, at the end of a school year, when the four school houses each put on a concert. Boyer encouraged me to write our Fortescue house concert. Which I did.
Our evening included playlets: sketches would perhaps be a better word. Also rhymes about various Fortescue inmates such as Vian, a tall Cornish lad.
Have you ever wondered why
Vian’s over six feet high?’
For when measured he is found
To cease two yards above the ground.
Vian is a man of iron.
And it would not be surprising
If he’s slowly oxidising…
I heard the laugh of our genial physics master, Taffy, sitting in the front row. He had been telling us that rust was a form of oxidation. ‘Vian’! – almost my first poem, read aloud before the whole school, prompted by Boyer.
My parents refused to drive the ten miles to WBS to see our performance. But Harold shook my hand afterwards and, even better, the charming school sister lured me into her snug little den and kissed me!
When I left school, I volunteered for the Army, and was sent abroad to the Far East – in those days it was
always called ‘the Far East’ – to fight against invading Japanese armies. And every so often I would receive a letter from Harold Boyer. Keeping in touch.
After the war, he became an H.M.Inspector of Schools.
The Oxford area is full of schools. Harold was often about. We would lunch at the Bear in Woodstock, where drink and laughter flowed freely. He took an interest in the leisurely progress of my – I still use the term with hesitation — my writing career. Harold was the one man who cared about the state of play through those itinerant early years.
As one does, Harold sadly died one day. Isobel, his widow, said that Harold had collapsed by a red pillar box, about to post a letter. The great communicator was gone.
A few years later, Isobel and I, in the grounds of WBS, the school Harold had served so well, formally opened a new building, christened Boyer Hall. It is surely something to have a building named after one, as a memorial. To this day, I think of Harold’s support in stark, dark, days, and remain grateful.
